


The Scent of Stone

by Toastybluetwo



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 19:34:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/701870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toastybluetwo/pseuds/Toastybluetwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Battles and weapon oil evoke memories. Three Femshepley character sketches, loosely related. (Femshep/Ashley)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Scent of Stone

“You don’t just know how to fight,” Shepard noted, a rare smile playing at the corner of her lips. “You _like_ to fight.”

It was a revealing turn of phrase. Eloquent for Shepard, who preferred sentences to be concise and acts of diplomacy to contain violence. At least, with violence, there was no question where one stood. So much ill intent could be slipped into the syllables of words.

As Shepard’s words shed light upon her thoughts, so too, did they chase away the shadows in Ashley’s mind. They embarrassed her – was it proper for a commanding officer to know so much? – but she wouldn’t show it. She didn’t so much as shift in her boots or let the smallest blush cast upon her cheeks.

Instead, she diverted the topic. Williams picked up the barrel of the Carnifex, taking it from the rest of the neatly-placed parts, and held it up to the light. The recently-applied oil gave this section of shaped metal a sheen all its own. The curves and dips left small, dark half-moon stains on her scarred hands.

“I like puzzles, ma’am. A poem is a puzzle. Hand-to-hand combat is a fast puzzle in real time. You gotta get past your opponent’s guard to win. A weapon is one, too.” Williams chose next a mechanism so delicate that it required holding between her thumb and forefinger. Those fingers slid this piece onto the barrel with a minute flick of her capable fingers. A click of metal against metal echoed in the cargo bay, profound and final. But, as she slid her slick fingers over these two joined pieces, over the planes and valleys, her brown eyes found Shepard’s. “So are people.”

Shepard grunted, the sound almost unheard in the cavern of the shuttle bay. “There’s more risk with people. Even a bigger risk than a loaded weapon. At least you know where the weapon stands.”

Ashley sensed that Shepard meant to test her. Shepard’s words did not betray an opinion that she herself held. Shepard did not avert her gaze in a way of admitting weakness, revealing the fact that even the legendary Commander Shepard could be hurt.

No. Shepard did not look away. In fact, Shepard watched Ashley’s fingers, her piercing gaze watching the dance of skilled digits over metal folds.

Ashley realized that she captivated her commander – or perhaps part of her did so, those fingers that held so many scars from burns and gashes, whose thick knuckles ached at night from smashing against cheekbones and scalp crests and stiff mandibles. Pride became a river inside of her, collecting within her chest.

She would not flee from it. Ashley Williams retreated from nothing.

Least of all, a woman like Shepard – strong, tall, powerful, and fearless, like the tallest of Earth’s rare trees standing against the planet’s polluted winds.

“I know where I stand, ma’am,” murmured Williams. Her oil-stained thumb brushed a deep scar gashed into the weapon’s barrel.

~*~

Cerberus held siege to a lab filled with geneticists. Shepard mentioned never hearing of the lab during her time at Cerberus – in fact, she hadn’t even been aware that a human settlement existed on this particular planet. And yet, the base hid among the great leaves of what looked to Ashley like Earth’s palm trees. The air managed to sit at a humidity level of one-hundred percent without raining during the entire time that the Alliance trapped Cerberus within the fortified walls.

A small team of N7s had managed to acquire access to a secured ventilation system, but even that advantage left them at a loss. The Cerberus troopers wore full suits with life support systems. The scientists within did not. Poison gas would harm the wrong targets.

So, Shepard’s team waited for nightfall and, hopefully, one of the many severe thunderstorms that tore through the atmosphere of the planet every single day. The rain, clouds, and electrical interference would make the mission far more dangerous, but would give them crucial cover as they scaled the facility on foot and with a rope.

Vega took a nap while sitting against a tree, propped up by its ridged bark, fragments of leaves fluttering in the thick breeze and littering his scarred blue pauldrons. Vakarian listened to the newest Turian musical sensation’s offering, one foot tapping idly to each song’s beat.

Ashley daydreamed and waited. Herodotus’s _Histories_ , which she had uploaded onto her omnitool, had failed to hold her interest when, the previous night, its ancient words had kept her up well past her usual bedtime.

“I hate this part,” she confessed to Shepard. “The waiting.”

Shepard remained a monolith, motionless, not taking advantage of the trees but instead letting the sun beat down on her bare head and shoulders. Sweat glistened in her hair and fell down her cheeks, unheeded. She watched. She fixed her eyes through the trees, as if she could see the complex itself – _Just how good are her synthetic eyes?_ wondered Ashley.

Pausing for a moment, she remembered the last time that she caught Shepard staring at her, and when their eyes met, they nodded in the way of a near-motionless salute, a quiet acknowledgement. Just the memory tinged her boredom with delight.

When Shepard spoke at last, her tones remained even and calm. “They know we’re here. They might make a move early. Try to force their way out.”

And yet, even as the words slipped from her lips, Ashley caught a slight tremble in her commander’s tall frame. This near-imperceptible moment of weakness served as a reminder. Shepard was made of flesh and blood and cybernetics, a person with needs. She placed these needs before the mission.

This reminder moved her. Encouraged Ashley to move from her patch of cool shade and out into the oppressive sun, toward the med tent, where Dr. Chakwas sat conversing with a younger doctor. At their feet stood a small cooler containing a number of water bottles.

With a flash of a smile at both doctors, Ashley took two of these bottles and returned to Shepard’s position. One she extended silently toward Shepard.

Shepard did not cast a look of surprise back in her direction, but one of unhindered relief, silent in a small smile. A smile which Williams returned, albeit briefly, before opening her own bottle and taking a mouthful of the cool water.

On her parched tongue, with the gratitude in Shepard’s gaze and the delight in her own, the water tasted like ambrosia.

~*~

“You’re not made of stone,” Ashley whispered in the near-darkness, the air thick with the scent of desire and weapon oil. She inhaled deeply of it, taking it into memory. She intended to walk into battle with Shepard’s scent still on her lips and body.

Some warriors drew strength from adrenaline surging directly from imagined and remembered battles. Ashley fortified herself with Shepard in her entirety. She opened herself, heedless of the chilled air in Shepard’s quarters, and found herself divided in thoughts. The stars in the window above her – glorious, each a pinprick in the crimson nebula that reached out its tendrils for these fleeting bodies of energy. Shepard on her, in her, fingers curling within, stroking and pressing into her and leaving Ashley at a loss for speech.

“No, Ash.” Shepard’s whisper pitched lower than usual, and her warm breath danced lines of pleasure across Ashley’s soft folds. “I’m not. And neither are you.” The fingers withdrew and slid up, gentle, over Ashley’s straining nub, two fingertips travelling over the wrinkled hood.

A throaty groan escaped Williams’ lips.

“A rock might be hard to knock over, but they’re not complicated.” The hot blasts of air focused between Shepard’s lips, blew upon Ashley and her core. “You are, my warrior poet. We both are.”

Ashley heard Shepard’s voice, but yet it seemed as though the Commander spoke from another fragment of space-time, where words weren’t made of pure emotion and air didn’t turn into pillars of white-hot energy that shot up her spine. She gasped for air as Shepard’s tongue slipped between her labia, dipping into those warm folds, beneath them, finding spaces of fragrant skin that craved her touch.

By the time that their bodies melded at last, joining in the twining of limbs and shared pleasure, rubbing with the scent and slickness of desire, Ashley simply let syllables drop from her lips, each with the intent of showing admiration and love while, at the same time, saying nothing at all.

 


End file.
